


Player Safety

by InsaneTrollLogic



Series: Hockey!verse [13]
Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sports, Gen, Hockey, NHL AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-22
Updated: 2014-03-22
Packaged: 2018-01-16 15:09:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1351936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsaneTrollLogic/pseuds/InsaneTrollLogic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's 1970 and the NHL is expanding. Charles and Raven are on opposing teams, but find a common ground.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Player Safety

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to LJ 4/23/2012.
> 
> It seemed a bit silly to have multiple hockey verses. The stories are only loosely connected.

Charles finds the sport almost by accident. There's a frozen pond not far from the edges of the Xavier estate and he's owned his own pair of skates for years. One of the other children loans him a stick and for a little while, he gets to be normal.  
  
When Charles is a kid, hockey's a way to escape. The crush of the voices in his head narrows two a few simple goals. Peewee leagues are full of people who just keep thinking of how to stay on their feet and as they got better the thoughts were all about the same basic tone,  _Where's the puck?_  
  
He learns how to filter because he can anticipate. Learns how to fight because that's what you did after practice sometimes when the little digs from the day boiled up into infections anger that melted into something good-natured as they helped each other back to their feet.  
  
Mother tries to forbid him from playing. She says it's a sport for hooligans. She thinks it's crass and violent, and to a certain extent, Charles agrees. But she also misses the beauty of it, the passion, the swell of an arena and the harmony of thoughts as thousands of people scream for a goal.  
  
Charles doesn't have a body for this sport, and mother tries to push him into tennis and golf. But the nature of his mutation makes him fundamentally unsuited for the solitary games. He misses the rush that only comes from other people working toward the same purpose. Raven chides him for it, but that doesn't stop her from being a willing cohort, the two of them stealing out to the pond all through winter despite orders to the contrary.  
  
As he gets older the game speeds up but Charles doesn't. So he starts to let his mind open. Never enough to push people into blunders, but enough to give him an edge. And it ties him to the rest of the world. Gives him not precisely friends--Raven is the only person who can truly hold that distinction--but teammates at very least.   
  
So when it comes time to go to university, he looks at his acceptance offers, at Oxford which had been a dream of his for years…  
  
And then to the scholarship that offered him a place on the Cornell Varsity Hockey squad.  
  
Raven finds the letters and scans them over, rolling her eyes. "Can I come with you to Ithica?"  
  


***

  
  
Cornell sees four frozen fours and a pair of national championship by the time he graduates. Raven watches the games, the ugly spector of jealousy taking shape in his head. When he graduates, Charles tells himself that should be the end of it, that genetics and his doctoral studies are waiting, but there's been rapid expansion in the NHL who added six teams during his sophomore year and intended to add another two in the upcoming season. There are opportunities that wouldn't usually be there.   
  
And he's curious to see how far he can go.  
  
Raven shakes her head, tells him good luck and leaves.  
  


***

  
  
Charles lands quite solidly in Buffalo on the newly formed Sabres. It suits his needs. His partner on the blue line is a lanky ginger named Sean Cassidy who looks about eighteen and is also the only other person on the team who opts for wearing a helmet. The rest of the team calls them idiots and then hard hats which morphs slowly into hard heads and all of them suit Charles just fine.  
  
As much as he tries to keep from evesdropping, it doesn't escape his notice that he's not the only mutant on this team. Sean appears to have some sort of sonic screech and their goaltender, Darwin, is endlessly adaptable, the sullen winger, Alex Summers has a problem with plasma bursts and the kid who centers his line, Hank appears to have a physical mutation that allows him superior speed and strength. Marvellous, all of it. He would have missed this all in Oxford.  
  
But, as he realizes trying to kick the puck free from a scrum behind Darwin's net, it would have saved him rather a lot of pain. The player behind him, cross checks him and his face slams sideways into the board. Mind over matter though. Pain's just another thing he school his mind to hide away. He gets a stick on the puck and shuffles it sideways as he gets another hard blow to the back of his head.  
  
He shoves back because if he doesn't, he's going to be victimized for the rest of the game. The last thing a player needs in this league is a reputation for being weak. He's rewarded with the stick to his chest again. He hits the boards behind him. The man in front of him wants to fight. He can read it in every corner of his mind.   
  
But he thinks of Raven who he hasn't seen in almost a year and how he always thought the game should be played.  
  
And he skates away.  
  
He's attacked from behind and hits the ice hard. Alex swoops in and takes the fight instead. Charles squeezes his eyes shut hoping to get rid of the ringing in his ears.  
  
The game shouldn't be like this, he thinks as Alex lands a right hook. Shouldn't be like this at all.  
  


***

  
  
He's hanging on by a thread.  
  
Everything else he's tried, he's been good at. Been elite. In the NHL he's just barely hanging on. He can see the flaws in his teammate's games. How Alex doesn't see the right pass to make and Hank is too timid. He finds ways to tell them about it, how to fix it and they get better.  
  
He can see his own flaws too. He's a purely reactionary defenseman. People don't think at this level, they make decisions instantaneously and the second Charles takes to interpret it means he loses a step. He's got a knack for intercepting passes, but one on one, decisions made in front of the net, he's just not fast enough.   
  
It's not he'd have nowhere to go. Doctoral studies, genetics, it's all still there.   
  
Times like this he misses Raven most of all. Raven who would poke him with her stick as she flickered from a little girl in a sundress to a blue girl in full pads and accuse, "You don't know how good you have it."  
  
But Charles knows exactly what he has and how it compares to the rest of the world. He can hear them all. The tone of the thoughts still the same as peewee leagues.  _Where's the puck? Hit him._  
  
And then one person who's different. One person who's just thinking,  _Don't change._  
  
He knows the shape of this mind, knows it like it's his own, but neither of Raven's familiar forms are on the ice.  
  
Instead, wearing a Rangers uniform is a broad shouldered blond man with amber eyes and something of Raven's form in the way he skates. At the next face off, he can't resist but think,  _Raven, how are you?_  
  
He can see the flinch in her face and then her mental voice floats back,  _Still up to old tricks, I see. Dangerous road.  
  
No more so that yours. _  
  
The puck drops and Raven takes up her position in front of the net. Charles tries do dislodge her. She's looking for deflections.   
  
Charles taught her that.  
  
It's almost a minute before the Sabres manage to clear the puck from the zone and Charles digs to get to the bench for a line change. Raven glances at him as she returns to her own bench.  _After the game. We need to talk._  
  


***

  
  
Charles isn't sure which Raven to expect, but he's a bit surprised when it's the same form she wore through the game. She's leaning against the side of the building, wearing a black leather jacket with her arms crossed. "Haven't been introduced yet." Her voice is deep, masculine and has a Canadian tinge to it. "John Raven."  
  
There's a bit of a challenge to the handshake, but Charles doesn't flinch. "The pleasure is mine, Raven. Let's have a drink."  
  
They have about a dozen and it's more than enough to get past the mild estrangement. "You're better than I am," Charles says. "You have no idea how hard that is for me to say."  
  
"That's what you have to say? Nothing about the rest of it? You know, how I should have to hide. How this is dangerous for me."  
  
"You're in the NHL. I rather think you can handle yourself against most threats. I just wish you would have told me what you were planning."  
  
"So you could try to stop me?"  
  
"No, so I could try to get you on my team."  
  
"Really?" Raven says and for a second she sounds just like she did when they were kids, but it fades as she takes another swig of whiskey. "I mean you guys are kind of awful."  
  
"Careful." Charles signals for another round. "We will see you twice more this season."  
  


***

  
  
The off-season comes and Charles isn't terribly disappointed to find the Sabres out of the playoff picture. He's pretty sure at least two of his ribs have been cracked for a month. The New York Rangers on the other hand make the semi-finals before they bow out and Charles watches every shift from the stands as Raven puts on a dazzling display of stick handling.  
  
They’re bested by the Blackhawks and Raven melts back into her blue form as she and Charles watch the Stanley Cup finals. They spend the rest of the summer trading threats about next season.  
  
That lasts until Raven gets a phone call and threats turn into plans.  
  


***

  
  
Training camp has a few new faces. Raven towers over Charles in her borrowed body, grinning at Hank who is the one player who refuses to change in front of the rest of the team. Charles smiles, juggling a puck on his stick.  
  
In the opposite corner of the room, Erik Lehnsherr sits and laces up his skates.


End file.
